Core Faculty
Beatriz da Costa
Associate Professor, Studio Art, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.
(MFA Ecole d’Art d’Aix en Provence, 2001)
Core Faculty: Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) graduate program, UCI
Affiliate Faculty: Arts|Sci Center, UCLA; Culture and Theory Ph.D., UCI
Beatriz da Costa is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who works at the intersection of contemporary art, science, engineering and politics. Her work takes the form of public participatory interventions, locative media, conceptual tool building and critical writing. da Costa has also made frequent use of wetware in her projects and has recently become interested in the potential of interspecies co-production in promoting the responsible use of natural resources and environmental sustainability. Other issues addressed in her work include the use of emergent technologies to investigate context specific configurations of social injustice, the politics of transgenic organisms, and the social repercussions of ubiquitous surveillance technologies. Through her work da Costa examines the role of the artist as a political actor engaged in technoscientific discourses. This topic will also be addressed in a forthcoming anthology she is currently co-editing with her colleague Kavita Philip entitled Tactical Biopolitics: Theory & Practice life.science.art, (ed. Beatriz da Costa and Kavita Philip, MIT Press, 2008).
da Costa is a co-founder of Preemptive Media, an arts, activism and technology group, and a former collaborator of Critical Art Ensemble (2000-2005). She has exhibited and lectured both nationally and internationally at venues such as the Andy Warhol Museum, Exit Art Gallery, the Zentrum fuer Kunst und Medien in Germany, SONAR 2006 in Barcelona, the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montreal, and the Natural History Museum in London. Recent media coverage of her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, CBS Evening News, BBC, CBC and the New Scientist. da Costa has received grants from the Durfee Foundation, the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts and the University of California Institute for the Research in the Arts. She has also received an Honorary Mention from the Adobe Emergent Artists Award and been nominated twice for the Rockefeller New Media Arts grant. Preemptive Media recently received the Social Sculpture Commission from Eyebeam and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and has received past funding from Franklin Furnace, Turbulence, the Experimental Television Center and the Beall Center for Art and Technology.
da Costa received her degrees from the Ecole d’Art d’Aix en Provence in France. She also spent 2 years as an exchange student at Carnegie Mellon University while completing her MFA thesis. da Costa’s main area of teaching at UCI resides within the Arts, Computation, Engineering graduate program. In addition she also teaches undergraduate courses in Studio Art and Computer Engineering, and frequently supervises graduate students across a range of other disciplines.
http://www.beatrizdacosta.net
http://www.preemptivemedia.net
Paul Dourish
Paul Dourish is a Professor of Informatics with courtesy appointments in Computer Science and Anthropology. His research lies at the intersection of computer science and social science, with a particular emphasis on the social and cultural foundations of contemporary computational practice. His work currently centers around topics of embodied cultural practice in ubiquitous computing. He is a member of the Center for Ethnography, the Institute for Software Research, and the Game Culture and Technology Lab, amongst other UCI affiliations. Before coming to UCI, he was a Senior Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC, and has also held research positions at Apple Computer and at Rank Xerox EuroPARC. His book, “Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction,” was published by MIT Press in 2001.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/
Robert Nideffer
Robert Nideffer researches, teaches, and publishes in the areas of virtual environments and behavior, interface theory and design, technology and culture, and contemporary social theory. He holds an MFA in Computer Arts, and a Ph.D. in Sociology, and is an Associate Professor in Studio Art and Informatics at UC Irvine, where he serves as an Affiliated Faculty in the Visual Studies Program, and as Director for the Arts Computation and Engineering (ACE) Program. He is also Founding Director of the UC Irvine Game Culture & Technology Lab, and a related academic “Specialization in Game Culture and Technology.” Robert has participated in a number of national and international online and offline exhibitions, speaking engagements and panels for a variety of professional conferences.
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/
Simon Penny
Simon Penny is Professor of Arts and Engineering, a joint appointment of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. He is Founding Director of the Arts Computation and Engineering graduate program. Until 2005 he served as layer leader for the arts component of the UC Irvine division of Cal-(IT)2. Currently he is heading up a research lab focusing on embodiment, performance and telematics. Penny is an Australian artist, theorist and teacher in the field of interactive media art. His art practice consists of interactive and robotic installations, which have been exhibited in the US, Australia and Europe. He has spoken world-wide on electronic media art and his essays have been published in seven languages.
http://www.ace.uci.edu/penny/